George Fredrick Handel's Messiah Concert:Tremont Temple Baptist Church, Boston

Donna and I usually spend Sunday evening at Park Street, but his week we skipped the weekly service to attend a performance of Handel's Messiah. As I can be interested in the history of architecture, after I told Donna that we could stop at any church at any time when she felt the need to pray, even if the church was empty, we have visited several of the "historic churches of Boston", She liked the Temple and was impressed. I was looking forward to going because I've known that Charles Dickens, John Gilbert and Jenny Lind performed there. We were invited by the Orchestra Manager, who is a friend of Donna's and her supervisor as a church librarian; so it was a nice "Hello". On Handel, I prefer Classical to jazz and blues and listen to British Rock- the violins in the middle were furious in 16th notes that may have been 32nd notes and I do like elaborate composition. The choral at times was gorgeous (overdubbed parts?) at first listen. Donna sings in church every week, so there was added the hymn Come All Ye Faithful and Angels We Have Heard On High. I tried to explain that I had read a novel entitled The Memorial Hall Murder where the detective Hamilton Dow solves a mystery revolving around a performance of Handel's Messiah where there is a mysterious murder in Mem 201 and Memorial Hall explodes during the performance. Now I can see that the two works of art are very separate, a mystery novel where the Dean jumps off the church roof and a religious masterwork of orchestral and choral music.

The Bay Psalm book : being a facsimile reprint ...

The Bay Psalm book : being a facsimile reprint ...:

'via Blog this'

Please allow The Bay Psalm book on exhibit without feeling the necessity to read all of it.

My fiancee, whom I now live with, is a librarian at a church on Tremont Street, and apparently Old South, on Boylston Street, (which is a pretty church) just parted with its copy of this book, the first book printed in the United States. It is from 1640 and it is actually difficult to find graves dating back that far in the Boston churchyards. King's Chapel dates from 1685,- we have one of their coffee mugs that bears the date.

The book's importance is Puritanism- anything written by them that was new and not a direct quote from the Bible is even more fascinating when it is not the "word of God",  although it was monarchy orientated and or post-Lutheren, it was "stuff they really just made up", like what to do on Sundays after leaving Europe.
It's importance to us is that she prays alone whenever needed; and consequently attends church because its something she likes, whether the church is empty or not. If I'm invited, I'm agnostic, as a poet, but it is her "freedom", not freedom confronted by tyranny, but just undiluted self-expression.

The above link is to The Bay Psalm book;  keep it, as much or as little.

Park Street Church,Tremont Street, Skimming Oliver Wendal Holmes-Pages from an old volume of life; a collection ...

During a reading of Ephesians, the above theologian was mentioned. The photograph is from a volume of the writings of Oliver Wendal Holmes. My confidence in Holmes is more as a poet than a theologian, so I'm only skimming for information, not profound insights that may or may not be debatable. If you can guess who the theologian in the picture is, the below link will bring you to what the poets of the Atlantic Monthly wrote about him. Pages from an old volume of life; a collection ...:

'via Blog this' In regard to the sermon itself, the passage from Ephesians was the most succinct, compressed summary of Christian ethics you could ask for, it ending with a supplication for Thanksgiving, but thankful that you are not lead into temptation. (and sing praise) In a way, if it is remove from the metaphysics of The Bible, it is a pretty good code of living- for some reason the minister repeated the word "transcendent" and I found it irrelevant to the passage, in that it seemed to be merely the words of an Apostle or Disciple, exhorting us to live right, or morally... and of course what works is that to pray is to worship in both thought and deed to where it does become a Utopia, where we would not even pollute the earth unneccessarily.

Donna and I have a wild rabbit,

Donna and I keep finding rabbits in the wild. This is the fourth. We first found one in Mount Auburn Cemetary. Then we found one near the garden at the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow House. Then another again in the Mount Auburn Cemetary. I'm a little tired to write passages from a philosophical novel tonight, but the doctors wanted to test me for cancer. I tested negative for prostate but for a week we didn't know. The in the courtyard behind our apartment at one o clock in the morning, there was another rabbit. Its where my ashtray is- not that I don't take lung seriously, but we didn't think it was lung, so I still use nicotine. I'm tired tonight to make it a work of art, but tonight I called Donna over to where I was to show her that the rabbit returned. Its wild and our courtyard is to a building with 19 floors. Physically tired from the tests and from the roses still on the table. We thought I could have had cancer, one that is not emphysema- but I don't. We did go to church, which on the surface is a scene from a slow-moving movie in itself and I did give her a thank you. I was reading Mr. Britiling Sees It Through by H.G. Wells before the service. I read ten volumes by the British author E. Phillips Oppenheim during the summer and there were two more in the store; I have a game where I look for hardcover first editions of novels in written before 1925 for a dollar to three dollars and I leave the five dollar copies there, most are copies published before 1930, and never having read an H. G. Wells before it seemed interesting that he wrote "Adult Fiction", which he did. So thoughts of one's own impending demise and a morbid somber mood make for deep fiction, not tonight, but I'll keep out some reflection. Before seeing the rabbit, which I didn't know would return when I was not in solitude, I called in a car accident, which was right in front of me, my test scheduled for the next morning. The person needed a phone and I thought quickly enough. Is it in middle age that mostly if you just think quickly enough when you need to, then most things feel as they should, and you know that you've gone from one day to the next. And then there's the contemplative way to live in between. (I mentioned 19 floors because each year, to contrast we visit Rockport Massachusetts, I can right now hear the train; our rabbit is surrounded by Harvard, MIT, and depending how lost you get, probably the Boston Museum of Science.)